Staff assaulted at Moose Lake sex offender facility

Daniel Wilson, a committed client at the Minnesota Sex Offender Program facility in Moose Lake, said Wednesday that a "vast majority of clients are horrified" by the two assaults that took place there recently. He said that despite the past records of the people who live at the facility, most are "nonviolent." But he also said "we all sort of expected it" when it came to the attacks. On May 1, according to a complaint filed in Carlton County District Court May 3, client Nicolas Ladell Aron-Jones viciously attacked a security counselor at the facility. He placed the motor from a fan from his room inside a pillowcase and hit the counselor with it repeatedly, the complaint says, and also kicked him and stomped on his head.

The counselor was hospitalized with a traumatic brain injury, and was in stable condition this week.

Aron-Jones was charged with attempted second-degree murder and first-, second- and third-degree assault with a potential penalty of 20 years in prison. He is in Carlton County Jail awaiting another court appearance Monday.

On Monday, a week after that attack, four staff members were hurt in a unit after another altercation with a client. The staff suffered minor injuries.

Christopher Sprung, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Human Services that oversees the sex offender program, said "the incident began when a client picked up a chair and struck a security counselor. Three other staff members intervened to protect their coworker until an internal security team arrived and removed the client."

MSOP is investigating the incident, and it was reported to the Carlton County Sheriff's Office. The state will contact the county attorney should it deem any charges are warranted, Strung said.

Safety first

AFSCME Council 5 is the union that represents employees at the Moose Lake MSOP. Executive director Julie Bleyhl said in a statement that the union "condemns the latest attack on our union member and several other workers ... We renew our call for safe staffing to ensure every worker is safe on the job and can complete their shift the same way it started and go home safely.

"Every worker has the undeniable right to be safe on the job and for their workplaces to be properly staffed and our union will stop at nothing to ensure all workers are safe at work. This latest attack highlights the critical and often dangerous work these public service workers do every single day that protects all Minnesotans, and we need to make sure they have the resources and staffing necessary to be safe on the job."

Rumblings

One worker at the facility, who did not want to be named, said "clients are getting upset because they are on lockdown" since the May 1 assault and there have been "more and more threats toward the staff. Staff is doing the best they can with what they have to work with and who they have to work with," the employee said.

Daniel Wilson has a living space near Aron-Jones. He called his violent behavior an "outlier" when it comes to the behavior of clients. Aron-Jones has many incidents of attacking staff on his record.

"It's rare," Wilson said of the spate of assaults. But the way staff treat the clients can lead to violence, he said.

"They push and antagonize all the time," he said, until staff "eventually run into someone who's had enough."

Nature of the place

Wilson is a vocal advocate for reform in Minnesota's commitment of sex offenders to open-ended terms in treatment facilities. He works with advocates outside the facility to let people know what is happening inside. There are several online and social media sites outlining the need for civil commitment reform.

Wilson records incidents at the Moose Lake facility and takes statements from fellow clients. He said he's heard from at least 10 clients that Aron-Jones was found with an improvised knife, or shank, the day before the May 1 assault. They reported that a staff member simply took the weapon from Aron-Jones and did not report him or place him under any type of closer monitoring or even in lockdown.

The MHS will not comment on any investigation it is conducting regarding the incident, Strung said.

Wilson said a "hostile environment" can be expected in a place where people are held with no real chance to ever get out. They have nothing left to lose. But he said clients "don't worry about each other." It's the staff that face the danger, he said.

He also said medical care is poor there, and some may act out in order to be sent to prison, where the care is deemed better.

Wilson said the two facilities in Minnesota - the other is in St. Peter - need serious reforms. "Legally, it's a hospital," he said, "but it's run like a prison." He said people need to scrutinize the civil commitment process and not look the other way because of the sexual nature of the clients' past behaviors.

He did a horrible thing in his youth, he said, and there is a "stigma" toward clients like him that "keeps the public blind" to changes that need to be made.

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Responding to assaults

The Pine Knot News posed several questions to Christopher Sprung, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Human Services that runs the Minnesota Sex Offender Program at Moose Lake. Here is the information he provided in response, with slight editing for clarity:

• There have been three significant assaults on staff at MSOP in Moose Lake over the course of about a year. Outside of the two incidents this month, the last significant assault was on June 30, 2022.

• It is highly unusual that MSOP would experience two violent attacks on staff within the span of a week. Since 2019, MSOP in Moose Lake has logged a total of 16 OSHA-recordable staff injuries due to aggressive client behavior. That number includes the two most recent incidents. Currently, there are 440 clients housed in Moose Lake.

• Safety for staff and clients is always our top concern. It's our shared responsibility to see to it that everyone returns safely home to their families at the end of their shift. Nothing is more important, so we go to great lengths to safeguard staff, to anticipate, identify and eliminate risks, and to train and equip staff to protect themselves and each other if incidents arise. Anytime incidents like this happen, we conduct a thorough internal review to ensure that safety protocols were followed and to identify any opportunities for improvement. We make immediate changes when necessary.

• All staff receive training each year in physical self defense and how to verbally de-escalate and influence volatile situations. Security counselors and emergency response team staff also receive training in physical control tactics. They use that training to protect themselves and their coworkers.

• DHS has a special unit that investigates crimes in DHS-operated facilities. That unit, called the Office of Special Investigations, notifies and brings in local and state law enforcement agencies and agents as needed, depending on the nature and severity of the crime. For felony assaults, OSI generally calls law enforcement to the scene. For those that do not result in serious injury and are likely to result in misdemeanor charges, OSI does not ask local law enforcement to respond. In any case, once investigations are complete, OSI refers the cases to the county attorney's office, which decides whether to pursue criminal charges.